Teachers at the school had discussed threats made by Cruz while he was a student there, before he was expelled for fighting.

One student said yesterday: “I think everyone had in their minds if anybody was going to do it, it was going to be him.”

Cruz’s mother died three years ago and his father died when he was a child.

SPLASHNEWS

Nikolas Cruz's arrest card after 17 people were shot dead in a Florida school shooting

The shooting was the 18th in a U.S. school this year, according to gun control group Everytown for Gun Safety.

It was the deadliest ever at an American high school, surpassing the 1999 rampage at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, where two teenagers killed 12 students and a teacher and then themselves.